Background: Between 1990 and 2010, many national and international factors converged to both beneficially and antagonistically affect people's health and the Thai healthcare system. Moreover Thailand is moving to aged society and a low birth rates.
Objective: To analyze Thailand's health issues for baseline information for changing medical education, services and researches.
Material and method: Information on illness of in-patients, out-patients and casualties came from hospitals nationwide and from hospitals withdrawals from the three health insurance schemes in fiscal 2010. The data included 96% of the population. Research literature was also extensively reviewed. The data were analyzed by age groups and burdensome diseases.
Results: Out-patients were treated 326,230,155 times and in-patients 6,880,815 times at Community Hospitals (44%), Provincial Hospitals (22%), Central or University Hospitals (26%) and Private Hospitals (8%). Infants and elderly were the patients most commonly treated in hospital. Among pediatric patients, perinatal disease, intestinal infection, respiratory tract infection, injury and poisoning and teenage pregnancy predominated; while among adults, it was accident, non-communicable and chronic disease.
Conclusion: Thailand is faced with the dual burden of infection and non-communicable diseases. Risky behavior and changing social structure are underlined this epidemiological transition. Medical schools and health service systems need to be recalibrated to response proactively to these challenges.